


A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

by BrilliantLady



Series: A Counterfeit of Love [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Altered Mental States, Angst, Date Rape Drug/Roofies, F/M, Ginny Weasley Bashing, Love Potion/Spell, Post-Hogwarts, Relationship Problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 00:32:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8644414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrilliantLady/pseuds/BrilliantLady
Summary: Ginny had dreaded for years admitting to Harry that she’d been dosing him with love potions. But his response was something totally unexpected.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Be warned: this fic is not a love story. Note - this story contains references to past love potion induced non-consensual sex, but no descriptions of any non-con scenes appear in this story (past events are only referred to).

 “I got it!” Ginny cried happily as she walked through the door, Harry emerging from his study to meet her at the door. “I got the spot! I’m the new Seeker for the Holyhead Harpies!”

“Well done, sweetheart,” Harry said with a delighted smile, taking her into his arms. “I knew you could do it!”

Harry pecked her on the lips, and Ginny pressed herself eagerly against her fiancé’s lean body, deepening the kiss to something more passionate.

Her breathing grew heavy as they embraced, but Harry just found her kisses… wet.

“Would you like to… celebrate with me?” she asked with a knowing smile, her hand tugging at his to lead him in the direction of the bedroom.

The spirit was willing, but the flesh was distinctly uninterested. “Sorry, Gin. I’m ah… not up to it right now,” he admitted with embarrassed shame. In fact, they’d been having trouble in the bedroom for almost a month now, and the last time he could recall her kisses and gentle hands arousing his attention was when they’d celebrated their engagement. He worried about it – he didn’t know what was wrong. Had only the chase excited him? The passion seemed gone from their relationship lately. Where he used to count down the minutes until he could finish work and be home with his love, now he wasn’t sure what had previously had him so distracted and anxious to hurry home. His relationship was suffering, but his studies as a trainee Auror were going better than ever.

“We can still try,” she insisted, but shadows of worry haunted her eyes now.

He let her push him onto their bed and unbutton his shirt, as she pulled hers over her head and tossed it on their bedroom floor with a sultry smile. He tried, he really did. He buried his face in her ginger hair and nuzzled into her neck, but the scent of the honey conditioner she loved and the smell of her skin that used to arouse him now just reminded him vaguely of having honey on toast for breakfast. He kissed and nipped at her neck mechanically, and she sighed and melted against him, eyes fluttering closed as her hands grasped at his messy hair, wordlessly demanding more.

He would conquer this, the rebellion of his unwilling body. He loved Ginny, he knew it. Even if right now that feeling was elusive, and touching her held no more excitement for him than hugging her brother did.

“Harry, yes!”

She pulled away from his kisses and roving hands to gaze up at him with passion-filled half-lidded eyes, to see his own gaze filled with nothing more than distracted scientific curiosity as he played with a strand of her hair with one hand and admired how the light made it shine like copper. Her hand slid down his body but found only soft disinterest, unresponsive to her touch. She stroked him for a while, but got no response beyond his encouraging smile.

“Maybe,” she said hesitantly, “you could try whatever you usually do, when you’re on your own.”

Harry shook his head. “No good. I never did enjoy that. You’re the only one who’s ever excited me,” he said with a smile, hoping to please her.

But she pulled away, more upset than before, and with shaking hands put her shirt back on.

At Harry’s insistence that he wanted to keep trying they kissed for a while longer before she gave up. He did his pants back up, hovering worriedly and touching her arm gently at the sight of the tears glistening unshed in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Gin. I’m trying, I really am. It’s not you, it’s me. I know it’s trite, but it’s true. I think maybe I need to see a doctor, or a Healer. It used to be easier.”

“Before we got engaged,” she said, sounding anguished.

“Yeah, about since then. But I do want to get married – it’s not like there’s someone else, or anything like that,” he assured her worriedly. “We’ll get the spark back. I’ll see a Healer tomorrow. It’s embarrassing, so embarrassing, but I’ll find someone who’ll be discreet about it and not go running to the _Daily Prophet_. We’ll find out what’s wrong.”

Her voice was a soft embarrassed murmur, “I know what’s wrong.”

“What?”

“I said I think I know what’s wrong,” she said, and fell into his arms, sobbing.

He whispered reassurances to her as he held her tight as she shook with ugly sobs that wracked her tiny frame. That he still cared for her, that they’d work it out, that it wasn’t her, she was beautiful and wonderful. She just cried harder, so he held her quietly until the tears ran their course and died down with little hiccupping sobs.

“It’s alright, Ginny,” he soothed, rubbing her back gently in tiny circles.

“It’s my fault, but I never meant any harm, you have to believe me.”

“What is it? What do you think is wrong? You didn’t dose my food with something that kills desire, did you?” he asked with a worried laugh. “If you were testing something for one of the twins, best just come clean now, Gin, I promise I won’t be mad.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s the opposite actually.” She sat down on their bed that was covered in the soft patchwork quilt her mother had made for them as a Yule gift even though she disapproved of them “anticipating their vows”, avoiding his gaze as her hair hung around her head like a scarlet curtain.

“I did it for the best, you have to believe me,” she pleaded. “At first it was just a little dose. To attract your interest. Spark whatever was already there. And you seemed so jealous of Dean, I thought it was working.”

“A love potion?”

She nodded. “Just a little of Fred and George’s strawberry _Kissing Concoction_. It shouldn’t do much, it’s very mild. It just helps attraction blossom if it’s already there. It seemed to help, after a while. And I knew… I knew we were meant to be together. But then you left me – went off into the forest with Ron and Hermione. Did you… think about me at all while you were gone?”

“I worried about you. All the time,” he said, with a pensive look.

“But you didn’t miss me, wish you had me in your arms. Did you?”

Harry tried to remember – it was a couple of years ago now, and there were other, more traumatic memories that shone much clearer from that time. “There wasn’t really time for that, Ginny. We were so worried about finding the Horcruxes, you see. We were on the run for our lives.”

She sniffled and hiccupped as her sobs returned.

“Hey now, stop, it’s alright. We got back together as soon as I was back, didn’t we? It’s alright if you used a potion on me at the start, I forgive you. You know I’m thick-headed about love. I was a late bloomer. But I wised up, didn’t I?”

Her head shook back and forth in frantic negation, as if trying to shake an unpleasant thought right out of her head. “ _First Love Beguiling Bubbles._ That’s what I tried next, and we got back together. Then _Cupid Crystals_ , when you didn’t seem to want to… do anything with me. Except hold hands and kiss occasionally.”

Harry’s face fell. “I don’t believe it. None of it. Not ever? None of it was real? It feels real… felt real.”

“I guess… it wasn’t. I hoped, now we were engaged, now we were going to spend the rest of our lives together… I thought since love had grown between us that it would stay. But you hate me! You never wanted me at all, and I’m such a fool!” she sobbed and buried her face in her hands, and Harry sat down next to her heavily on the bed, gazing vacantly out the window at the cherry blossoms bedecking the trees in their garden where pale pink petals fell like a soft fall of snow when the wind blew. He admired the beauty of the sight like he admired Ginny’s beauty. She was beautiful, and he could acknowledge and appreciate that fact, but the sight of her didn’t move him to passion any longer.

“Tell me… tell me do you still love me, Harry?” she pleaded, with tears in her eyes.

“I love you,” he said, more a test than a statement of fact. No butterflies fluttered in his stomach at the thought of the love they shared. Thinking of their love was just… comfortable. The joy was a soft one like the comfort of being warm and dry inside one’s home on a rainy day, not the thrilling rollercoaster ride of emotions it used to be – desperate to be with her, desolate without her.

Brittle hope was in her voice as she asked unsurely, “Do you mean it? Really?”

“I… love you…” he repeated slowly, tasting for the absent truth of the words as he said them. A thoughtful frown crept unconsciously onto his face, shattering her dreams with the tiny movements of his brow and lips. They were just words now. He could say those words to anyone – they were hollow now.

“You don’t… you don’t. You hate me. I can see it!”

The love was gone. Did he hate her? He was starting to feel a little angry at her, but no, he didn’t hate her. He felt too empty for hate, still in shock. He cared for her still, and it hurt him to see her cry, even after her revelations.

He could admit to himself that he wasn’t attracted to her, but without that physical pull did he love her? He thought about being with her, going to bed with her, spending their lives together. It seemed a vaguely comfortable thought. It would be nice to be married, to have someone with him every evening to talk over his day with. Maybe a family if they could ever sort their love life out. He thought about her wet kisses, so like kissing Cho Chang. He didn’t feel desire for her, any more than he ever had for anyone else. The passion he’d felt had only come from a bottle, and he had a dreadful feeling he knew why.

“I don’t hate you, Ginny.”

“But you don’t love me!”

“No. I’d like to, I really would, but I don’t think I do. Not without the potions. The hot chocolate every night, right?”

She nodded and sobbed. “I’m so sorry!”

“I thought it tasted different lately. I just thought it was less vanilla. I didn’t mind trying something new, but it didn’t taste as good as before.”

“Do you love someone else, now? Or… men? Have I ruined things for you?”

He lay an arm around her shoulders, and she snuggled into his side with uncomprehending gratitude at his forbearance with her actions. He wondered silently if the soft affection and concern he still felt for her would fade into indifference or hatred as the potions continued to wear off, or if this was what he felt naturally. Time would tell, he supposed.

“No, there’s never been anyone else. And I’ve never looked that way at another bloke, either.”

They sat like that in silence for a while, as she rested her head against his chest and tried to listen for his heartbeat, fearing she might never be this close to him again. He watched the cherry blossom rain outside the window, and knew Sirius had given him the answer to his current dilemma years ago.

“You know Ginny, my parents didn’t start dating until their last year at Hogwarts. Before that, my dad chased my mum for years, but she didn’t want to be with him. Rejected him over and over. People used to tell me that they started dating once my dad had grown up a bit. But Sirius told me differently, late one evening. He told me dad used a love potion on her.”

Ginny blinked up at him. “But they were so happy together, everyone said…”

“And I was happy with you too.”

“Oh.”

Harry sighed. “I’ll probably never know for sure but I think maybe he kept it up for a while, even after they were married. Until after I was conceived.”

“Maybe he stopped it earlier? Once they’d gone out a few times?” Ginny’s hand curled hesitantly into his, and he held it willingly. It was a comfort. It was a difficult topic to talk about.

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think so. Once I heard about Voldemort, I wondered, you see.”

“What does he have to do with it?”

“Dumbledore told me things… showed me memories of his early life in his Pensieve. His mother, Merope Gaunt, drugged his father with a love potion so he would be with her. She stopped after she got pregnant – she thought that Tom wouldn’t leave her but of course he did.”

Ginny started crying again, and Harry stroked her hair softly. “Hey, don’t worry, this isn’t our story, it’s his.”

“Are you going to leave me?” she demanded tearfully.

“No, I’m not saying that,” he reassured. “I don’t know yet. We’ll talk about it, alright?”

She clung to the fragment of hope he offered to her, sniffling sadly. “Alright.”

“The point is that Voldemort was conceived under a love potion. Dumbledore said it meant he was incapable of love as a result…”

She gasped, “And you think you were the same – that your mother was under a love potion?”

“Yes. I used to worry about it, sometimes. Dumbledore said love was my greatest strength, something Voldemort could never understand, the power he knew not. But I never told him the truth – I didn’t want to shatter his hope or admit what a freak I was. The sad truth is that the closest I ever got to any kind of love was wanting Sirius to be my dad, and that was more about wanting safety… a real home. I wanted _him_ to care for _me_.

“I wondered sometimes, before we were together, Ginny. When the other boys started being interested in girls. Or even just doing things on their own. It was such a relief when I fell for you – I knew then I wasn’t like Voldemort after all.”

“Oh, Harry!”

“But I guess we had that in common too. Neither of us can love. Not without a potion,” he said, and there was bitterness in his voice, and tears welling up in his eyes at last for the love he thought he’d found that turned out to be just another manipulation. Ginny had manipulated him all along, for _years_ , like too many others had manipulated him – all for the Greater Good. To be the perfect innocent child saviour for the grateful crowds, the perfect scapegoat for the masses to deride, the perfect heroic martyr to save them all when they couldn’t deny the truth any more… the perfect boyfriend. A fairy-tale romance to thrill and delight all, from the bottom of a bottle.

“So I guess this is it,” Ginny said with a defeated sigh. She pulled the diamond engagement ring off her finger, and held it out to him in the palm of her hand. It glittered in the sunlight. The token of his manufactured devotion to her.

He didn’t take it from her. “I’m not sure yet.”

“You forgive me?”

“I… no. Not yet. But maybe I can, later. I need some time to think.”

“Should we tell people? You could… tell the Aurors, or arrest me yourself. I deserve that.”

He thought of how Molly’s face would crumple with returned pain to see her daughter sent to Azkaban. She still had barely gotten her spark back, was only just coming to terms with Fred’s death, and it had been years. When she’d first heard they we engaged, Molly had insisted he call her mum. She’d even laughed, like all was well again in the world, just for a moment.

Harry didn’t want to see Ginny suffer, either. The love she’d made him feel might have faded, but he still remembered it. He still cared for her, even if the driving force behind that care had evaporated like the morning dew in the harsh glare of the sunlight.

“No, I won’t turn you in. And we shouldn’t tell anyone, not unless we’re sure it’s over for good. I don’t want people upset. Think of how your family would take it.” By the anxious look on her face and the way she gnawed at her bottom lip – he’d once found that so entrancing – she was worrying about her mother too, and maybe George. George still faked his way through his days, with determined mania and a smile that fooled strangers but not those who knew him well. Harry could see the shadows in his eyes, and it hurt every time he heard another one of George’s sentences trail off, forever unfinished. George sometimes laughed when he noticed himself doing that, but it was a painful laugh to witness, with an overstretched mouth showing too many teeth in a simulacrum of amusement, and dead, empty eyes.

-000-

The days drifted past after that conversation, and Ginny kept wearing her engagement ring. Neither of them said anything to her mother when she picked out the wedding decorations, or stopped her from taking Ginny to be fitted for bridal robes. It was… easier. Just to let it all happen. He didn’t want to be alone, and this was his chance at having a family. The love was gone, but the feeling of soft appreciation and friendship remained, if tainted occasionally with disbelief and anger at her actions. He waited for it to fade, and checked all his food and drink with a thoroughness that made Ginny wince, even though she understood why. He still cared for her, even with his precautions.

They settled back into their routines, though he made his own hot cocoa in the evenings now, with no extras added. Some days he brooded all evening, shut up away from her, crying for what he’d lost, for what he’d never had. Others he fired curses at the target in their back garden, over and over again until his anger was spent and he panted with exhaustion. He held her in his arms most nights while she worried and hoped - would this be all she would have, the last time he would be with her. She clung to him with quiet desperation when he got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, wanting to be reassured that yes, he was coming back. She’d thrown away his suitcases and all the large empty boxes in the attic, with strange lying justifications about their dusty and worn condition to hide the fact that she didn’t want him to pack – couldn’t bear to have the tools of his possible departure lying ready to hand even though she knew that taking them away wouldn’t stop him leaving if he wanted to.

He didn’t turn her in. Couldn’t bear the thought of her locked away, or the hurt it would cause the whole Weasley family. He didn’t tell anyone Ginny had been drugging him, except for Hermione. He had to – he was worried about her too. That was a mess. She was bewildered by his continuing insistence on “thinking things over”, and she was _furious_ with Ginny. In fact, pretty much the whole Weasley clan was a forbidden topic to talk about with her now.

Harry and Ginny talked once more about what she’d done when the wedding was only a couple of weeks away and her nerves couldn’t take the uncertainty any longer. She broke down at their kitchen table, as they moved little names written on slips of paper about, trying to decide which guests should be seated at which table at their reception. They had to move some people around now Hermione wouldn’t be sitting with Ron.

“I need to know, Harry,” Ginny pleaded. “I need to know if you’ll be standing there with me to be bonded next month, or if you’re just waiting for the right time to call it off. I need to know if you’ve forgiven me, and if we have a chance of making this work or not. Please, I have to know if all _this_ is just a waste of time.” Her trembling hand swept dismissively in the air above the tiny paper rectangles of paper in tidy rows, and the names of their friends and family fluttered in the air from the breeze she provoked, falling back down in a jumbled heap. Harry picked up a couple of stray names that had been swept to the floor, placing them carefully back on the table.

“I’m angry. But I still care for you, and now I know that sense of caring is real. I don’t care for you the way you want me to – I don’t think I ever can. I’ve talked to some people about it, in confidence. And I took a Portkey and saw a Healer in Belgium who specialises in potion side effects, and swore him to secrecy. He said my guess about my father using a love potion was probably right. It shows up most often in the eyes – they’re too bright. Could you live with a man who will never be able to love you?” he asked her, emerald green eyes staring intently into her own hopeful brown eyes.

She hesitated before asking, with a wince at her own desperate gall in doing so, “You could take the potion again? We were so happy, don’t you think?”

“No,” he shook his head firmly. “And how dare you ask that! I won’t live a lie my whole life. But maybe… sometimes. On an occasional evening.”

She laughed, almost giddy with relief that she hadn’t _really_ angered him with her impetuous question.  “Yes, we could do that. I miss you, Harry.”

Silence answered her, and it stretched on uncomfortably long with nothing but the ticking of their clock to relieve it, until she felt all the awkwardness of her statement.

“I don’t miss you,” he said at last, the harsh truth cutting her cruelly. “That’s rather the problem, isn’t it? To have you next to me folded in my arms at night, the woman I care for, is all I desire. There’s no passion left. No love. But I still want _us_ , Ginny. The companionship. I’ve thought about it, and despite how angry at you I am for drugging me… I still want that dream. A wife. A family. A home with love, even if I can’t give it to you naturally. I desperately hope I will feel it for my children, if we ever have any. That’s a different kind of love – maybe I’ll get to feel that. But I won’t conceive any children under the influence of a love potion. And if you so much as _try_ to finagle that, _I will_ _leave_ _you_.”

She paled at his sternly worded threat, determination shining from his death-green eyes.

“There would be no second chances. That would be it. I think I’d even call in other Aurors over it, have you sent to Azkaban.”

It was less frightening a threat to her than the other one.

“But if you don’t take a potion… then how can we have children?”

“Muggles have ways - IVF. We’ll get help, in the Muggle world. It won’t be very pleasant I expect, more clinical than romantic. We can still have children of our own, I promise. But being together – that will be strictly for recreation, and only when I agree in advance to be dosed.”

She thought about it for a moment, and nodded. She couldn’t lose him, no matter what. He was all she’d ever dreamed of, and nothing would make her give up on their relationship. They were meant to be together – she’d always known it. “Alright, Harry, that’s what we’ll do them. Whatever makes you happy. And I’m… sorry. Again. For the potions.”

He couldn’t say he forgave her… not yet. There had been enough lies in their relationship already and he wouldn’t add to them. But he silently enfolded her in his arms, his beautiful fiancée whom he still cherished even if he couldn’t love her. This imitation of love was the best he thought he’d ever manage, and he didn’t want to cast it aside just because it was imperfect.

He might not be in love, but she was. Perhaps it would be enough for the both of them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't like Harry's choice to stay with Ginny... good. :) It's supposed to feel plausible, not _nice_... do not mistake this for a truly happy ending.
> 
> The sequel to this story will be a Hermione POV fic and rather different in tone, with much less angst. She is not at all happy with the Weasleys! She will have her revenge, and it will be sweet indeed. 
> 
> Thanks to Toraach and LokiFirefox for their feedback on the draft fic.


End file.
